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Linux USB Problems on Dimension E521 AMD 64 X2
Hi,
Anyone else try running Linux (in my case Ubuntu 6.06) on the E521 with the AMD 64 X2 processor? I am having a problem when using xorg where my USB devices, more often my mouse, but my keyboard has had the problem as well stops working. It is almost like the interrupts start getting masked, but it isn't that. Because when the mouse stops working I am usually able to still use the keyboard.
It happens after a while, and usually in times of heavy use. I guess really instead of heavy I would say normal. But it has never happened that it will be working and then I let it lay idle for a while and then reach for it again and it be frozen.
This started happening under the amd64 version of Ubuntu but I have tried several different versions by now and the problem continues to happen.
As far as troubleshooting it has been a real pain. There is never a message in the kernel log or shown by running dmesg. Actually once or twice I have seen the irq status -71 received, but I am pretty sure that is not the cause, becuase it has only happened about twice out of maybe 40 occurances. And there is no message in the Xorg log either.
I have tried the default amd64-generic kernel the latest amd64-generic, the latest amd64-k8 kernel (I think 2.6.15-27.48) I have tried running the i386 uniprocessor kernel and the latest k7-smp kernel. All of them have the same problem.
In an effort to get to the bottom of it I have re-compiled the kernel according to the directions here: http://doc.gwos.org/index.php/Kernel_Compilation_Dapper and turned on debugfs and collected data, but there doesn't seem to be anything of interest. It seems I get hundreds of thousands of lines of -115 status (Which I believe is the controller just telling the device that yeah, I hear ya and I am going to do something EINPROGRESS) and then nothing. The mouse appears to continue to function at least the circuit which senses movement and turns the LED into bright mode. And under Windows I have had no problems at all.
The only solution that always works is to disconnect the USB cable and then reconnect it, which grabs a new device file /dev/input/event7 and probably does some other magic registers with the USB controller, and a bunch of other stuff and then the mouse starts working again.
The only other consistent problem I have noted is the IOAPIC stuff complains about a bug, and sometimes it won't boot and panics, other times it figures out a way to get by and does so. Because of this I have tried booting with noapic and other than changing the way /proc/interrupts looks there seems to be no change in the problem. Eventually under usage the mouse stops responding entirely. Even looking at cat /dev/input/mice there is nothing getting there.
I have upgraded the BIOS to 1.0.3 that had no effect. And also turned off the Cool and Quiet support in the bios.
Any thoughts, recommendations of how to proceed, or any other suggestions are appreciated.
Thank you,
Kevin
Anyone else try running Linux (in my case Ubuntu 6.06) on the E521 with the AMD 64 X2 processor? I am having a problem when using xorg where my USB devices, more often my mouse, but my keyboard has had the problem as well stops working. It is almost like the interrupts start getting masked, but it isn't that. Because when the mouse stops working I am usually able to still use the keyboard.
It happens after a while, and usually in times of heavy use. I guess really instead of heavy I would say normal. But it has never happened that it will be working and then I let it lay idle for a while and then reach for it again and it be frozen.
This started happening under the amd64 version of Ubuntu but I have tried several different versions by now and the problem continues to happen.
As far as troubleshooting it has been a real pain. There is never a message in the kernel log or shown by running dmesg. Actually once or twice I have seen the irq status -71 received, but I am pretty sure that is not the cause, becuase it has only happened about twice out of maybe 40 occurances. And there is no message in the Xorg log either.
I have tried the default amd64-generic kernel the latest amd64-generic, the latest amd64-k8 kernel (I think 2.6.15-27.48) I have tried running the i386 uniprocessor kernel and the latest k7-smp kernel. All of them have the same problem.
In an effort to get to the bottom of it I have re-compiled the kernel according to the directions here: http://doc.gwos.org/index.php/Kernel_Compilation_Dapper and turned on debugfs and collected data, but there doesn't seem to be anything of interest. It seems I get hundreds of thousands of lines of -115 status (Which I believe is the controller just telling the device that yeah, I hear ya and I am going to do something EINPROGRESS) and then nothing. The mouse appears to continue to function at least the circuit which senses movement and turns the LED into bright mode. And under Windows I have had no problems at all.
The only solution that always works is to disconnect the USB cable and then reconnect it, which grabs a new device file /dev/input/event7 and probably does some other magic registers with the USB controller, and a bunch of other stuff and then the mouse starts working again.
The only other consistent problem I have noted is the IOAPIC stuff complains about a bug, and sometimes it won't boot and panics, other times it figures out a way to get by and does so. Because of this I have tried booting with noapic and other than changing the way /proc/interrupts looks there seems to be no change in the problem. Eventually under usage the mouse stops responding entirely. Even looking at cat /dev/input/mice there is nothing getting there.
I have upgraded the BIOS to 1.0.3 that had no effect. And also turned off the Cool and Quiet support in the bios.
Any thoughts, recommendations of how to proceed, or any other suggestions are appreciated.
Thank you,
Kevin
jmaier
2 Posts
0
January 5th, 2007 15:00
I'm running SUSE 10.1 32bit on the E521: no mouse and keyboard issues after the bios upgrade anymore! And Linux runs on both cores with full speed. My boot parameters are: noapic acpi=noirq. I did not yet try without these boot params.
It seems that Dell had enough of our complaints in this forum ;-)
Regards,
Jürgen
efrynn
3 Posts
0
January 5th, 2007 16:00
It's more like I have had may too much of dell's amateurism.
What is sure is that the lab's next machines are not going to be dell's
mwette
38 Posts
0
January 6th, 2007 22:00
hanging issue. I believe it has to do with DMA from the CD-ROM.
Message Edited by mwette on 01-06-200706:13 PM
bernix
1 Message
0
January 6th, 2007 22:00
I was not able to install amd64 linux on e512 machine. Debian doesn't recognize teh SATA. Fedora, Ubuntu and Suse hung at while loading the kernel/initrd.
Has anyone installed a amd64 on this machine? could you guide me how to to it?
thanks
earl92
10 Posts
0
January 6th, 2007 22:00
One happy linux user...
vincecate
11 Posts
0
January 7th, 2007 10:00
plugged the keyboard and mouse directly into the system, and the mouse
hung in about 1 minute. I rebooted, thinking maybe a new BIOS is only
loaded at boot time (anyone know?). After rebooting it has lasted
10 minutes so far. Looking in the logs to see if I can find anything
about loading the BIOS, I found the following in syslog:
pcie_portdrv_probe->Dev[02fc:10de] has invalid IRQ. Check vendor BIOS
pcie_portdrv_probe->Dev[02fd:10de] has invalid IRQ. Check vendor BIOS
Hum.
Mouse has not hung yet, but still too early to say one way or the other...
-- Vince
vincecate
11 Posts
0
January 7th, 2007 10:00
How does a Linux user update the BIOS to this 1.1.4 people are talking about?
-- Vince
vincecate
11 Posts
0
January 7th, 2007 10:00
Thanks, but I don't have DOS or a Floppy. What is the next easiest way? Do I need to get FreeDOS and put it on a USB or something?
Thanks again,
-- Vince
vincecate
11 Posts
0
January 7th, 2007 10:00
I can see a Windows release:
http://search.dell.com/results.aspx?c=us&l=en&s=gen&cat=sup&cs=&k=bios+1.1.4&qmp=12&p=1&subcat=dyd&sort=K&snpsd=A&nf=&dt=&navla=&fm=&ss=&ira=False&cp1=-1&cp2=-1&si=&spf=&ssysid=&ssysn=&stag=&~srd=f
But where does a Linux user go? Or do we just update our systems from our distribution?
-- Vince
earl92
10 Posts
0
January 7th, 2007 10:00
vincecate
11 Posts
0
January 7th, 2007 11:00
earl92
10 Posts
0
January 7th, 2007 13:00
cant help you here you'll need at least a floppy drive and dos...
batsy
6 Posts
0
January 7th, 2007 14:00
# wget http://www.offenders.org/freedos.img
# dd if=freedos.img of=/dev/sdb (your pendrive device)
# mkdir /mnt/usb
# mount /dev/sdb /mnt/usb
# cp DME521-010104.EXE /mnt/usb
# umount /mnt/usb
Reboot the machine and push F12, select USB device. When prompted to run Autoexec.bat, chose No. You should then be able to run the BIOS installer from the DOS prompt.
myfreeforum
14 Posts
0
January 7th, 2007 15:00
Lobotomik
20 Posts
0
January 7th, 2007 15:00
Just download the BIOS update, execute the .exe file from within windows and be done.